This invention concerns air bag safety systems and more particularly, air bag installations utilizing one or more deployment door panels fit into an opening formed in an interior trim piece of an automobile passenger compartment. The door panels when hinged open enable the air bag to be deployed into the passenger compartment upon inflation from a storage container located behind the interior trim piece.
Air bag safety systems comprise one or more air bags each of which stored in a folded condition within an air bag canister. These systems include means for rapidly inflating the air bag upon sensing the beginning of a relatively severe collision. The inflated air bag is intended to cushion the driver or passenger to prevent injury as the vehicle is rapidly decelerated as a result of the collision.
Currently, a driver's side air bag is stored in a location within the steering wheel, while the front passengers are intended to be protected by an air bag stowed behind the instrument panel. Additional air bag locations are currently under consideration.
The present invention concerns particular problems associated with the front passenger air bag installations. Since the stored air bag is stored behind a trim piece, i.e., the instrument panel, an opening must be formed in the trim piece in order to allow the air bag to exit from its storage location and into the passenger compartment upon inflation.
This is done by opening of the hinged door panels described above which swing open as the air bag is inflated, typically by the air bag itself pushing the door panels out of the way. The construction of the deployment doors is important inasmuch as they should provide secure protection against tampering and yet allow instantaneous opening upon the occurrence of a crash event.
Since the door panels are fit within the trim structure in a highly visible location, i.e., in the steering wheel cover or the instrument panel, in the case of the driver's side and the passenger's side air bags respectively, styling is important. Such considerations have led to the so-called invisible seam type installation, in which the deployment door panels are covered with a smooth expanse of the trim piece outer layer and cannot be detected visually.
Various door patterns have been employed including, in the case of a double door, an "H" pattern in which two doors are hinged respectively at the top and bottom region of the trim piece and hinged along horizontal axes.
An X pattern has also been proposed in which four triangularly shaped and intefit deployment door panels are each hinged about base of the triangular shape. Experience with air bag safety systems has led to problems caused by impacting of the deployment door panels with either an occupant of the vehicle or with other portions of the vehicle interior, particularly the windshield.
Such impacts have caused injury and/or excessive damage to the vehicle. In particular, shattering of the windshield can also cause injury to an occupant by the scattering of glass fragments within the passenger compartment.